Tag: celibacy

I understand that aloneness is a rich state to be in, but it is no excuse for the endemic loneliness at the heart of modern culture.

Here I am again, with some more ways in which I am lonely! Ah, but I am grateful. I am really grateful. Every waking moment of mine is full of the luxuries of relatively clean air, relatively unpollutued food, and signs of a biodiverse Nature around me. I am fit and healthy and versatile. What more do I want? Well, I want to ensure that these ‘luxuries’ are standard for everyone, in the likelihood of approaching global upheaval.

I am heavily critical of contemporary society and culture, and so I am lonely. I am deeply aware of how the current global civilisation-mesh -global capitalist civilisation as a whole- cannot last. Just as all previous empires and civilisations have collapsed and evolved, so will this one. What makes you think that capitalism is so special?

Fossil fuels are becoming more scarce and there is not enough time to develop infrastructures based on other fuels, before the disintegration and Descent of the old infrastructures. We are globally ‘way behind time’ in terms of preparedness for the necessary civilisational shift of the coming decades. This is largely due to the stubbornness and fear of the kings of the old systems. This could be a good thing, as civilisation breakdown-breakthrough will finally show us the irrelevance of these kings and their habits-of-highly-ineffective-people.

But I am lonely in my realisation of the transience of capitalism. I attempt to educate others, so that I don’t feel so lonely. I suppose it is the loneliness of the leader that I feel, but I wish to encourage leadership in all of us.

*

I live in an alcoholic culture. A culture that uses alcohol to subvert valid anger, displace carnival and to dumb down the revolutionary intellect that is within all of us. Hone your revolutionary intellect kids -you’re going to need it!

I don’t like to drink much. In that sense I could be lonelier than the average drinker. Maybe I’m just in the wrong country.

*

I am genderqueer, or I prefer, ‘a gender rebel’. Not to identify with traditional masculine and feminine concepts, puts me at a disadvantage of connection, you could say. A certain loneliness results.

*

Being a changemaker and an entrepreneur is lonely. I am on a bridge over an abyss. I am afraid of what is on the other side, and I may fall and have to climb my way back up to the wrong side of the chasm -where I started from. Ironically, in order to strive ahead to build strong post-capitalist community, I have to sometimes sacrifice my connection in-the-meantime to the scant community that is already in my life.

*

I am celibate, but erotically so. This is the result of the disjunction between my liberation and the repression of the society around me. It is especially lonely when in my attitude I am misjudged as ‘easy’ or on the other extreme, ‘prudish’. Nevertheless, celibacy contributes to my rich aloneness which is something seperate to my loneliness. Without some of this fertile solitude, I would not be able to write about the isolation that so pains me.

The first practice of this genderwild mystic is sexual restraint. For someone like me, to be unrestrained in my thoughts and hopes is only to be frustrated and oppressed by a sexually unenlightened culture. I have lost count of the miscommunications that have occurred between myself and women in real life and on dating sites. Enough!!

The second practice is gratefulness. Despite the years of mental illness I have suffered, I am a privileged white man with access to the middleclass wealth that has been passed down from my grandparents.

The third practice is ‘letting go’, or in Theravadin Buddhist terms, ‘samatha’ meditation. I sit and feel grateful, and then I let go. I let go of thoughts. After years of practice, I can fairly quickly reach a state of no-mind; one pointedness of mind, or samadhi. This is the basis for a practice of mindfulness in my waking life, from moment to moment. It gives focus.

Sexual restraint strengthens will-power and supports mindfulness and focus. In return, mindfulness and focus aid sexual restraint. Again, I am no prude. But in a sex-negative culture I would rather abstain. At least until I can find a community of sexually liberated and more importantly, heart-liberated human beings.

Nineteen years ago, on 15th February 1999, an international conspiracy culminated in the revolutionary thought-leader and feminist Abdullah Ocalan being imprisoned in a Turkish jail, in which he still resides -if he is still alive.

Reading Ocalan’s words today contributes to my increasing realisation that, by the standards of mainstream modern civilisation, I too am a ‘radical’. I don’t necessarily like the connotations of this word, and how it might falsely separate me from some of my not-so-radical friends. Because, in the sense that I just want to live a free and balanced life, in respect of all human beings and the ecology of the planet, ‘radical’ is only normal and natural. Moreover, on these terms there is a radical inside all of us, waiting for the moment to have the courage to speak up. Surely it is in our uncorrupted Nature to wish to achieve balance in all things? Surely the global civilisation-mesh that we now live in is the most imbalanced in history?

This was supposed to be a personal diary extract, taking the pressure off from discussing wider concerns and complex social issues. But of course, I am inseparable from what is going on in the world.

One of my so-called ‘radical’ responses to the world I live in is to practice celibacy. After a few months of practice, this seems to be bearing fruit. Sometimes, there are moments where I feel I am denying myself. I may even experience physical pain as a result of this. But in other moments I feel less denied and more contained and focused. My creativity then bursts forth in writing, theatre and song.

I also contemplate how my celibacy is linked to my feminism. Wanting to be a better person, to improve my self, my male / genderwild gender and its relation to other genders, particularly women. In the past, I admit I have been a trawler of images of women, not specifically pornographic but led by porn, so that everywhere I looked, I would see women as more or less stylised images; not as themselves.

I would like to say I am free of all that but I’m not. I may be free from pornography but I am not free from the pornographication and sexualisation of culture which is everywhere around us in modern society. We categorically do not live in sexually liberated times. I know what sexual liberation is, in my body, heart and mind. I have found the beginnings of it in practice, in the communes I have visited. I am sex positive, and if society was truly liberated, I might not be celibate. Modern consumerist society, however, mistakes sexual proliferation for sexual liberation. It’s not the same.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I dedicated my love to the women of Afrin, who are right now defending the most radical women’s movement in history, in Afrin, northern Syria, against a horrific Turkish invasion. Please help me support them.

!Epic Blog Subjects

!Epic Blog Subjects

My name is Matthew, author of !Epic Tomorrows. Click here to help me rebel against the evil Hydrocarbon Twins, Corporate Ogres, the Devil of Neoliberal Economics Himself, and the Same Old Story into which they are written…